pages tagged kiwifoo07

internetnz

Wed, 14 Feb 2007 16:00:00 +0000

baacamp07: the success story of InternetNZ

Here's a very late baacamp report. Colin Jackson told the story of Internet New Zealand. A group of concerned people got together, formed a co-operative. I'm not sure of the exact type of legal entity they used, but it involved a constitution, and their consititution was democratic and non-commercial. They even used its democratic provisions once and got sufficient members to oust a bad president. They used this charitably chartered enterprise to get control over the .nz registration space, and so use its registration money for the benefit of all internet users. He described how they have funded a history of successful lobbying. The session was quite interactive with other old-timers relating a part of the tale and give their own perspective. Certainly a little piece of gold in my memory of baacamp.

startups

Sun, 04 Feb 2007 05:00:00 +0000

One person's opinion on funding NZ internet industry development

So, I went to a session on Internet Peering at foocamp, and I heard John Houlker from NZTE talk about peering and "other industry development ideas". And I ended up writing this little piece of reactionary spit:

What really disturbed me was a dude from New Zealand Trade and Enterprise talking about getting around this by subsidising internet start-ups. First of all he dismissed as nonsense the idea that "content providers shouldn't have to pay to have their content delivered". I agree with his principle, but he's missnig the point somewhat. He then bandied about taxpayer money like "well, maybe if we threw $1bn at subsidising internet startups' net bills, then we could get over the problem".

I don't even think I need to channel Ayn Rand to point out what a preposterously fucking stupid idea that is on all levels. For a start, the money would go straight to Telecom and Telstra's shareholders. They'd jack their prices up to compensate and we'd all end up paying more at the end. It's like saying, maybe we can solve world poverty with a big one-off food drop, but only to pregnant mothers and people younger than 3. Oh, and actually they only get meal vouchers for McDonald's and Burger King.

John Houlker later indicated his summary of the worth of my opinon, and went on to laugh at my ignorance because I didn't know what jargon like "hot potato routing" meant. Even though it transpired that was the basis of the starting point of my argument.

His first major rebuttal was that if the peering issues are fixed then the money might not just go to Telecom and Telstra. Perhaps I am going to need to start channelling Ayn Rand to explain why throwing money at internet startups is a silly idea. No, I'll refrain and just say that my guess of the net effect of this is that a whole lot of people would ignore reality in search of worthless dreams, there's exactly one successful startup that somehow manages to sell to an overseas bidder for the ironic figure of $0.9bn, a scary re-enactment of the dot-com era paid for out of the public purse.

I feel proud, I'm being called a moron because I think that the government throwing $1bn of tax take away to a pipe-dream is a dumb idea. "Stimulate the demand side instead". Priceless.

AYN RAND LEAPS OUT OF SV'S CHEST

Ayn:: That's a reallydumbidea!!!!!
SV:: Ayn, are you saying that investment for commercial growth should come from investors who can let their own commercial needs help filter out the workable ideas from the unworkable?
Ayn:: It's dumbdumbdumb!!
SV:: What?
Ayn:: stupid!

Sorry folks, I think that may not actually have been the real Ayn Rand. I'm not an objectivist, but I am fairly clear on the idea that government should be as small as necessary. So let's not use such crazy speak again, huh?

peering

Sat, 03 Feb 2007 23:00:00 +0000

baacamp07 topic: Internet Peering in New Zealand

Many (or, at least one) have already commented on David Cunliffe's sudden decision to review peering as an important issue to the New Zealand internet market. We all tried not to say, "well, duh". But we're geeks, of course we knew that was the real issue all along.

I think the problem is that the big players can basically cash in on their market dominance, then when any other player gets big enough to get there, they look around and think, "well, now we're up here, look at all these customers being reamed all around us... they'll thank us if we only ream them a little softer".

How do they keep their dominance? Well, one way is by interfering with the natural process of peering, effectively charging content providers to deliver traffic to and from their customers (who are also paying for the traffic). I think that there is an easy way to get around all of this, that represents an enshrining of what should be best practice and just good common sense.

What they should be doing is breaking up their netblocks into geographical segments. Refusing to route between netblocks is fine; why should I send this data from Wellington to Auckland for you? But refusing to accept traffic that is right at your door really has no excuse.

Tenet 1. aren't the edges of the network supposed to be the expensive bits?

So, you want to charge to provide me with data? I thought you already had a good network? Oh, you can't figure out how to deliver data without it costing the earth. What a shame you've slipped to being a lower tier provider. Well, tell you what, I'll build a network to you, and provide your network with service to all of the netblocks of my customers. Oh, would you like to borrow my uplink? I hear from your customers that yours must be poor.

So, anyway, the legislation corresponding to this would look something like:

6.3.1.2 Non-refusal of information exchange

    If a service provider gets a connection of a suitably prevalent network
    interlink type to the front door of the registered peering location of
    the internet netblock, the routing must not be refused, unless:

      A) another netblock which can route the traffic to the block is
         nominated, or advertised using standard Internet route discovery
         protocols such as BGP.

      B) the netblock peering location is in the process of changing, and the
         new peering location is to be used for new connections.

      C) another address is nominated for data exchange.

      D) another suitable address can be agreed with the exchanging party

    Peering addresses must not change more frequently than once every three
    months and never more than twice in a single calendar year.

Otherwise, it's like NZ Post setting up an address for service in Australia, and sending return mail to you Cash On Delivery.

I made up the three month / twice a year thing - somebody with more of a practical clue should pick good figures there. You could side-step this issue somewhat by saying they have to be approved peering spots, but that seems a little communist.

Tenet 2. if you're not peering in New Zealand, it ain't internet you're selling

How can you sell an "internet" connection if the vision that underpinned the founding of the internet is not just flaunted, but poked with a sharp stick and then squirted with juice from a bent lemon peel?

7.4.1.43 Internet services sold in New Zealand must have peering points in New Zealand

    If any service is sold in New Zealand which is advertised as connecting to
    the Internet, then the netblock must be one which has a registered peering
    address in New Zealand, unless another netblock is nominated from which
    routing to the block is allowed.

Anyway, those two tenets are basically it - and under the provisions of the existing Telecommunications Services acts and Roading acts, this should be all that is necessary - as any registered Telco should be capable (in theory, anyway) of running a cable to any registered address in New Zealand.

Hopefully what will then happen is that people like Telecom will break up their big netblocks into smaller ones as described above. The market for competition on transit will be opened wide. And it will be viable for those people who have the $900m to invest in deep sea cables to lay them. And we'll have our world-class high speed resilient internet backbone back.

Updates

I got a lot of feedback about these ideas from John Houlker from NZTE.

This proposal does not mean that content providers get a free ride

One of the problems with saying "free" is that "there is an old accounting rule - if something says free, rape it". Just like interest free student loans?

Well, anyway, you still need to pay someone to get the data out - we're not mandating hot potato routing (doesn't the argument just gain so much strength with all of these jargon terms?), but we are saying that you can't set the price. The market should set the price.

Because I'm sure there must be a flip side to that old accounting saying - "if you've got the market captive, charge what the market will bear"

Which set of netblocks? RIPE? any old /24?

For a start, what we're saying is that whoever is deciding where the netblock boundaries are (eg, RIPE), get to decide the smallest possible neutral peering partition. I think this is a good starting point. However routing within New Zealand can divide the netblocks up further - so, potentially, you could use allow a New Zealand registry to register these sub-divisions.

Here is where the tuning comes into it - Telecom could say they want "50 peering sites, just in Wellington" if they felt like making each exchange a peering point. It doesn't have to (and really, shouldn't) mean that Telecom is left with an unreasonable burden of forwarding. But equally they should not just say every /28 on their network is its own netblock.

Update: Telecom have identified 29 national peering points for people who want to play this game. Good for them!

theyworkforyou.co.nz

Sat, 03 Feb 2007 05:00:00 +0000

TheyWorkForYou.co.nz - Democracy meets Web 2.0

The government presence at baacamp was impressive - two ministers attended, each of whom were not only giving talks, but listening to the feedback they were being given, and - dare I say it - engaging in thoughtful interchange on topics. I was highly impressed to hear Judith Tizard's idea on what official information government should release - speaking happily of opening everything not restricted by the privacy act as raw feeds, even if the departments involved have strong opinions to the contrary. Good on her.

Compare that to Jack Straw, who once wrote;

...we have a problem in the House with researchers trying to prove a point, and with the TheyWorkForYou.com website, which seems to measure Members' work in quantitative rather than qualitative terms. That is an issue for the whole House, not just for Ministers.

Perhaps somebody could send this man a copy of the Cluetrain Manifesto.

I'm wondering whether Labour party insiders think that it might spell the end of the new Muldoonists in favour of parties that can do more than just bandy slogans about. Imagine that - politics being used as the centrepoint for debate relating to social change. Or maybe they just think they'd be invited to more parties that way.

Robert McKinnon gave a tour through sites like theyworkforyou.com, as well as talked about his plans for setting up in New Zealand - but with a different focus. Sure, you still have the sites that let you do things like see commentary from unreformed Maoists in parliament on one page, how many times MPs have spoken "she sells sea shells by the sea shore" and other useless statistics. But these figures are best suited for people who are resigned to letting the powers that be drive their country into the ground while they sit around watching the telly and eating takeaways, sighing with a compelling sense of dispassion.

Robert said that while he was looking at a site that let people with no social skills or sense of sponteneity flock together at big festivals so they can avoid the pressure to try and have fun on their own, and it occurred to him that instead of recording information about the pathetic comings and goings of TV-watching, white stripe-drinking louts trying to escape the hell that their collective apathy had allowed to raise, that he could instead track people's submissions on bills in parliament, as well as link to people who are writing about bills. A bit like getting everyone to chip together to see if collectively, we can cover them all with half the skill and diligence as Idiot/Savant.

And, he's doing it in Ruby on Rails. And, there's a Ruby user's group in Wellington. Why did nobody tell me?!

kiwi foo camp

Fri, 02 Feb 2007 23:00:00 +0000

On the registration form where it asked, "describe yourself in three words/phrases", I was "Lost for words". The other questions were, "name three people that you think should have been here, and their e-mail addresses" and "what would you bring back from the future?" For a technical conference, that the sample (of about 2) forms I looked at both said "World Peace" was a cool little sample of the vibe.

The camp was simply amazing, maximum kudos to Russell and Nat for organising it, and the school that hosted it. It wasn't the technically focused camp I was expecting - I was pleasantly surprised to see a marvellous cross-section of people from all walks of society. I ended up only giving a single talk out of the ones I prepared, but certainly talked to interested people over the weekend about the topics I didn't make a formal session of.

Apparently due to Nat's connection with Perl, the barrier of entry for people in the Perl community was substantially lower than would have otherwise been the case - I think I can count myself lucky :-). It certainly wasn't "elitist", people were extremely approachable in general and lots of new connections were made.

Instead of doing a round-up of who I saw etc, I thought I'd make a separate post on each of some of the "hot topics" that people were talking about.

off to kiwifoo

Thu, 01 Feb 2007 17:00:00 +0000

Alright, off to Kiwi Foo Camp (baacamp), which is being held in a 'secret' location north of Bombay.

I am taking three talk topics along - one on Linux Containers, the merging of systems like OpenVZ and Linux-VServer, a second talk on version control systems in part based on a four part series I posted to use.perl (part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4), and discussions with the bazaar developers. The final one is just really showing the Service Processor on the SunFire boxes in action.

I don't know which ones people will want to hear, but it should be an interesting weekend...